


Three-Story

by rageprufrock



Category: Macdonald Hall - Korman
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or rather, third story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three-Story

Bruno lives in a three-story house in Bethesda, Maryland, across the street from Swiss diplomats with an atrium instead of a foyer.   His father's a Washington lobbyist for HMOs and his mother writes position papers against big pharma.   Bruno's younger sister pops bubblegum and reads Paine for fun and tells Boots she thinks it's really hilarious how grossly self-righteous Canadians are and how she can't help revel in how the entire government collapsed on them.

Bruno winces and says, "Sorry.   Sadie hates life."

"I fucking love life," Sadie argues.

"Sadie!" Bruno's dad snaps, and smiles warmly at Boots again.   "I'm glad your parents let you come down for Christmas--Bruno's told us so much about you over the years.   It's wonderful to finally be able to meet you."

There's something about the way he says it that makes Boots go on edge, but he soldiers on and says, "It's great to meet all of you, too.   Bruno's had nothing but nice things to say."

Bruno's mom rolls her eyes and smirks, ruffling her son's hair as Bruno makes high-pitched whining noises of discontent, trying to duck out of her reach like a particularly pathetic dog.   "Yeah, I'm sure he's gushed about how much he loves and misses us."

"I do," Bruno lies feelingly.   "I stay awake at night yearning for the embrace of my family."

"Oh my God," Sadie says, looking like she's about to vomit, before she turns to her parents and says, "Anyway, the point is I am thinking about becoming a Libertarian."

It takes all of four seconds spent with Bruno's genetic background to understand why Bruno is the way he is.  

*****

It takes significantly longer than that for Boots to realize that Bruno's genetic background has decided that Boots is Bruno's boyfriend.

"Sucks that Mom's not letting you share a room," Sadie says, twirling the bangles around her wrist.   She's wearing a t-shirt that reads JEFFERSONIAN PURITY across her generous breasts and Boots tries not to stare but mostly fails because it does take a few fractions of a second to read.

Boots shrugs and keeps unpacking his bag in the enormous, sunny guest room, shoving away two weeks worth of shirts and shoes and setting his toiletries bag on the counter of the bathroom--where there are monogrammed guest towels hanging.

"We share a room all year," he says, distracted, "it's actually kind of a nice break."

"Sure, sure," Sadie says dismissively, and adds, "Anyway, Bruno's like, two doors down the hall and Mom and Dad are on the third floor anyway.   This is all so much artifice," before she waves and pads down the hall.

Boots is sitting on the foot of the queen sized bed, trying to decode what any of that meant when Bruno walks in and flops down on the bed with a whining moan, saying, "I hope you brought a suit.   My mom won the fight and we're going to Citronelle."

Boots stares.   "What's Citronelle?"

"Restaurant," Bruno says dejectedly.  

"Your sister's acting weird," Boots tells Bruno, reaching over his roommate to grab his duffle bag and searching around in it for a tie.

"My sister is perennially weird," Bruno reports.   "I dropped her like, twice when I was a kid."

Boots laughs because of course Bruno did.   "Of course you did," he says indulgently.

The knock on the open door catches Boots' attention, and he smiles shyly when he sees Bruno's dad leaning against the doorway this time.   Bruno's father looks like a much older Xerox, with the same dark, disheveled hair and square shoulders, his face still rounded by baby fat.   Boots would say he couldn't ever see him pestering Washington politicians but he's roomed with Bruno long enough to know that the rounded edges and sweet naiveté are completely fake.

"We're heading out in about half an hour," Dan Walton says.   "Your mom won the fight so we're eating at Citronelle.   Jacket and tie required."   He makes a face.

Boots can't help but laugh, and he shakes his head, saying, "It's fine.   I just hope you guys aren't going to a lot of trouble over me."

"Please," Bruno snorts.   "Mom would throw herself in front of moving train to avoid having to go to another Capitol Hill hangout so Dad could network during the entree."

"Hey," Dan says feelingly.   "Go get dressed, kid," he reminds Bruno, who pries himself off of Boots' bed and starts down the hall whining the whole way.

"Oh, right," Dan says, still standing in the doorway.   "I am sorry about the separate rooms.   Bruno's mom is just having a little trouble getting over the fact that her boy's all grown up and moved on from cupcake parties with her and her militant feminist cronies."   He winks and says, too innocently, "Anyway, we sleep on the third floor and we can't hear a thing.   Do with this information what you will."

And when Dan leaves, Boots says, out loud and to himself:

"Oh my God, they think we're boyfriends."

*****

Boots is a complete wreck by the time they reach the restaurant, which Bruno neglected to mention was apparently the most expensive restaurant in the city.   Washington at Christmas is like some sort of politically correct fugue state: wreathes and twinkling lights and nobody working anywhere.   When the waiter brings them all _amuse bouche _before the appetizers of skewered, panko-breaded and lightly fried heirloom root vegetables with a playful sauce made of dark, Asian vinegar and Japanese plums, Boots knows he's in trouble.

"Um," Boots says, trying not to make eye contact with anyone at the table.   Which was hard, but clearly worth the effort since three of them thought he and Bruno were boyfriends and the fourth was Bruno--who totally did not think they were boyfriends.

"I hate this restaurant," Bruno mutters under his breath.   "I always feel like a moron trying to remember which fork to eat with."   He pokes the three by his plate despondently.

Boots exhales gratefully and Sadie rolls her eyes some more, saying, "This is why Mom should have made you go to cotillion."

Bruno's nostrils flare in irritation as his parents stifle their laughter, and Boots has to bite his lip, because even if everybody is wrong, wrong, wrong about the boyfriends thing, it doesn't mean he _wants _ them to be wrong.

"Nobody thought I was an unshaven maneater," Bruno says sullenly.

"I would be proud to be an unshaven maneater," Sadie replies easily.   "And anyway, I wouldn't be so glib about the maneater part, isn't that right, Boo--"

"Oh my God, I'm just so thirsty," Boots chokes out.   "I'm just so, so thirsty.   Can I have some more water?   Is there more water?"

Everybody at the table looks at him strangely, but Angela Walton faithfully flags down their waiter, who appears with a beautiful crystal glass of still mineral water with a curl of lime zest in it.   Boots stares at it despondently and Bruno glares, saying, "I hate this restaurant.   We should have gone that place between the two strip clubs in Dupont."

"I love that place," Dan agrees, and then he says "Ow!   Jesus, Angela!" when his wife pinches him hard, which makes Sadie burst into laughter and Boots bite his lip because this really does explain a whole lot about his roommate.

"You okay?" Bruno asks him quietly when the entrees arrive later.   He looks concerned.   "You're acting kind of funny."

"I'm perfectly fine," Boots squeaks, and his eyes dart away as he realizes Sadie and Angela and Dan are all watching them talk, heads nodded toward one another and secretive.   "Perfectly, completely, fine.   And also, completely okay not to be sharing your room," he says, high-pitched.

Bruno makes a face at him.   "Right," he says, deadpan, and turns to his steak before muttering, "Freak."

"Bruno!" Angela admonishes, and turns to Boots, aflutter.   "Don't mind him.   He's just nervous."

Sadie rolls her eyes.   "Yeah, he thinks it's some big secret," she scoffs.

"What are you guys talking about?" Bruno asks, genuinely baffled.

"Is there salt?" Boots asks desperately, half-crazed.   "I really need some salt."

*****

Sometime between the entrees and the dessert Boots says, "I have to go to the restroom, Bruno would you walk me?" and Bruno says, "There's a _sign _," and Dan says, "Five minutes and I'm coming in after you."

"Bathroom.   Really really have to go to the bathroom," Boots says around the yawning humiliation, and bullies Bruno toward the back of the restaurant and shoves him through the door marked Gentlemen.   The bathroom's as high-end as the rest of the place, with free mouthwash and cloth towels and all sorts of other things that under normal circumstances, Bruno would be kleptomanically-inclined to stick into his pockets.

"What is wrong with you tonight?" Bruno demands, shrugging Boots' hands off his shoulders.

Boots covers his face in his hands and makes a keening noise.   "Bruno.   _Bruno _."

"Melvin," Bruno echoes, annoyed, " _Melvin _."

"Have you not noticed?" Boots demands.   "Have you seriously not noticed?"

"What, that you're acting like a freak?" Bruno challenges.   "Because I've noticed that."

"No, you moron!" Boots hisses.   "I'm talking about the fact that your whole family thinks we're--we're--"

Bruno stares at him expectantly, crossing his arms in irritation.   "We're what?   What?"

"That we're--" Boots starts, but stops and agonizes over how to break this to Bruno.  

It's not that he thinks his roommate is homophobic or likely to resort to physical violence or attempting to find another person to live with--it's just that despite outward appearances, Bruno takes bad shocks badly, and the day it became common knowledge that Elmer had gained carnal knowledge of a woman--for he was telling everybody in gloriously medical detail--Bruno had crawled underneath the bed and refused to come out again for almost a day.

By the time Boots puts together something coherent to say, Bruno's gotten bored and distracted, edging toward the marble counter of sinks and stuffing complimentary, embroidered hand towels in his pockets.

"What are you _doing? _" Boots snaps, trying to slap Bruno's hands.

"Hey, ow!" Bruno protests.   "Cut it out!   I'm not doing anything!"

"You're stealing towels!" Boots argues.   "Haven't we talked about petty theft before?"

Bruno makes a low, whining noise deep in his throat, and while Boots is trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Bruno lives in a three-storey house in Bethesda and is still unable to overcome his need to randomly thieve, Bruno starts putting yet another towel in his pants.

"Oh--would you--!"   Boots grabs for Bruno's hands.   "Can you please focus?" Boots yells.   "I mean--for God's sake, your family thinks we're boyfriends!"

Then Boots sees the reflection of a very put-out bathroom attendant in the mirror.

"What?" Bruno asks stupidly, eyes huge.

"Um, this isn't what it looks like," Boots says weakly, noting with a sinking heart that he's got one hand stuck for all intents and purposes down the front of Bruno's pants, fisting a towel that doesn't really look like a towel through Bruno's slacks.

"Of course," the attendant says, regaining equilibrium quickly and smoothing his face . "But I must remind you gentlemen that while Citronelle does not discriminate based on race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, we also do not allow any kind of fraternization on--"

"Oh my _God _," Bruno says, suddenly going beet red with realization, jerking Boots' hand out of his pants, a towel falling forlornly to the floor.

Boots covers his face.   "I knew it," he says to himself.   "I knew I should have stayed in Canada."

*****

Late that night, after an embarrassing dessert discussion of Bruno's tendency toward theft and how they might never be allowed back into the restaurant again due to assorted misunderstandings, Boots is lying in the guest bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling like he's going to throw up.

He spends a good twenty minutes considering whether or not he could climb down the elegant trellis of that winds down the side of the house and escape back to Ontario before Sadie sneaks into his room.

She yells, "Boots, what the fuck!" and climbs onto the bed, straddling his chest even as Boots pulls the sheet up to his neck in horror.

Boots hisses, "Oh my God!   What are you _doing? _"

"Oh _shut up _," Sadie snaps dismissively.   "Why is my brother sulking in the basement?"   She looms over him, knees digging into Boots ribcage threateningly, glaring as she says, "What did you do to him?"

Boots gapes.   "What did _I-- _?   I didn't do anything to him!"

"When we left for the restaurant, Bruno was fine," Sadie says, voice bordering on reasonable but just falling short.   "Then, when we get back from Citronelle he goes and takes an hour-long shower and puts on his _prep school sweatpants _ and sits in the basement playing Dr. Mario on Dad's old NES."   She reaches down and grabs Boots by the collar of his t-shirt.   "What.   Did.   You.   Do?"

In moments of extreme tension, Boots is generally able to separate out the important from the chaff, but he can't help but say, "Bruno has prep school sweatpants?"

Sadie makes a fist with her free hand.   "If you dumped my brother," she snarls.   "I swear to God."

Boots holds his hands up in front of his face in a really manly way.   "I didn't dump your brother!   Damn it!   We weren't dating to begin with!   Let go of me!"

Sadie looks uncertain but appears no less determined to hit Boots really, really hard for making her brother wear his prep school sweatpants, which Boots has to admit is kind of disturbing given some of the things Bruno has told Boots about his year at Sidwell Friends.  

"If you're lying," Sadie says finally, still clutching Boots' shirt, "I'm going to punch you anyway."

"Why would I be _lying _ about this?" Boots demands, exasperated and prying her hands off of his collar.   "Look, I honestly don't know where you guys got this idea that Bruno and I are dating from, but it's not true!   He's probably just sulking because I wouldn't let him steal towels from Citronelle."

"God, that _klepto-- _wait that's not the point," Sadie starts, and interrupting herself, she makes a frustrated noise, and says, "I don't understand--I mean, we get letters, phone calls--for God's sake, he invited you here for Christmas!"

"Is that like some kind of relationship marker?" Boots asks stupidly.   He's starting to get a weird feeling in his stomach like he and Bruno have been completely missing the hidden image in the Magic Eye.

Sadie scowls.   "What, do you guys do it differently in the great frozen north?"

"Hey," Boots says feelingly.

"Yes, stupid," Sadie yells.   Boots is really glad that this house is roughly the size of his entire neighborhood--his whole family would have come running by now.   "When somebody invites you to break bread with their family on a major holiday, it is important.   And when you've been writing letters to your family about how awesome and handsome and athletic your roommate is and how in love you are for like, six years, it means you're _married _."

"Bruno's been _what? _" Boots sputters.

It's right about then that the door opens and Bruno slouches in, wearing his Sidwell Friends sweatpants as reported with a look of flushed nervousness on his face, staring at his feet and saying, "Look, Boots--we need to talk about this boyfriends thing," and then taking one look at Sadie and Boots' somewhat compromising position before roaring, "Sadie, I'm going to _kill you _."

Boots barely has enough time to say, "Wait!   No!   It's not what it looks like!" before Sadie sits back up and yells, "You!   You kill _me? _  You've been sending me letters filled with _lies! _" and apparently the house isn't as big as Boots thought because right then Dan and Angela show up in the doorway Bruno has vacated to tackle Sadie off Boots.

*****

"Let's start from the very beginning," Angela says in her dispute management voice.

"It's a very good place to start," Dan quips in tune and gets glares all around.   "Sorry," he mutters.

"Speaking privileges revoked," Angela tells him breezily and turns back to Bruno, Boots, and Sadie, sitting shame-faced in a circle around the breakfast table in various states of undress.   "Now, first things first, and I'm sorry to be so blunt: Bruno, you and Melvin aren't dating?"

Bruno puts his face down flat on the table and mumbles through the wood, "Thanks, Mom, the true depth of my suffering humiliation hadn't really sunken in until you just said that in front of Dad and God and Sadie and Boots and everybody, but now it has.   Thanks."

"That's yes," Boots translates helpfully.

"Thank you, Melvin," Angela says, appearing more amused than distressed.   "Now, Sadie, you went to Melvin's room to...what, keep Melvin from besmirching your brother's honor?"

"God, _no _ and also _ew _," Sadie says, wrinkling her nose.   She points at Bruno, still face-down.   "He's wearing his Sidwell Friends pants in the basement!   Come on, that has to be a cry for help!   Any minute he was going to hang himself with the NES cord!   They'd obviously had a fight at Citronelle."

"She came to beat me up for hurting Bruno's feelings," Boots supplies.

"I told you we should have gone somewhere else," Dan sulks.

"No talking," Angela says blithely.   "All right then.   Melvin, I guess the most the important question falls to you: do you _want _ to date my son?"

Boots manages to squeak out, "What?" and Bruno throws himself onto the floor and tries to fake a seizure, which nobody even notes in light of the way Boots is choking on his own tongue as Sadie and Dan and Angela all stare intensely at him.   For one dizzying moment, Boots actually mouths the word 'cooties' before he comes to his senses and just says, "What?" again.

"Please, Melvin, once upon a time I was young and overly-convinced of my own coyness, too," Angela laughs kindly.   "Look, you two are obviously really bad at this so I'll ask again: do you _want _ to be dating my son?"

"Mom!   I'm really really having a seizure here!   I can feel myself chewing off my tongue!   It really hurts!" Bruno calls desperately from the floor.   "Maybe Boots is going to have a seizure, too!"

"I--are you serious?" Boots says, boggling.  

It figures.   He really should have prepared for something like this when he agreed to spend the holidays with the Waltons.

"Well, no," Angela admits.   "I kind of have an inkling what your answer is going to be already but you should tell Bruno before he really hurts himself thrashing on the ground."

From under the table, the noises of struggle stop and Bruno says, "This family sucks."   Boots is too busy blushing so hard he nearly passes out to agree.

Angela at least gives them the dignity of being unsupervised for their big emotional moment, all but shoving Dan and a still glowering Sadie out of the room.   And after staring at each other for a bit Boots says awkwardly, "You wrote them letters about me?"

"Yeah," Bruno says from the floor, sounding ashamed.   "But they weren't as gay and obvious are they're making it sound."

"Oh, okay," Boots says oddly.  

There was a long pause.

"That's a lie," Bruno admits sullenly.   "They really were."

Boots puts his face in his hands.   " _Bruno _."

"Well I didn't think you were going to say yes when I asked you to come down!" Bruno explodes, sounding slightly panicked and pushing himself up to collapse into a kitchen chair.   "Who doesn't go home to spend Christmas with their own family?   Who agrees to come down and watch my parents have dogfights over the dinner table about medicare policy and listen to my sister talk about the Jeffersonian purity of small farmers in Ohio?   I've been asking you since like, our first year at the Hall and you always said thanks but no thanks!   How was I supposed to know that this year would be different!   It's _practically tradition _ for me to be stupid in love with you and for you not notice!" Bruno wailed, horribly wronged, and he might have started on another screed about how evil Boots was to break their well-worn pattern of behavior but Boots blinked and said:

"Why _did _ I come?"

Bruno scowls at him.   "Oh, way to kick me while I'm down."

"No, no," Boots soothes, "listen--all those other years, I did have to go home, but--I had to go home this year, too.   My parents weren't happy about me spending Christmas here instead of Vancouver."

Bruno blinks at him.   Looking confused, he admits, "I don't understand."

"Oh my God," Boots says in dawning horror, "Bruno."

"What?" Bruno snaps mulishly.

" _Bruno _," Boots tries again, waving a hand between them.   "I think we're _already _ boyfriends."

Bruno furrows his brow.   "Really?   No.   Really?   No, I would have noticed," he decides finally.

"No you wouldn't!" Boots insists.   "You never notice anything!"

Scowling, Bruno crosses his arms.   "I notice everything."

"Did you notice the way Jane Norton from Scrimmages spent the entire night trying to get into your pants the week before break?"   Bruno stares at him stupidly.   "Did you notice how that girl at the last York meet kept trying to put her hands in your back pockets?"

Bruno flushed.   "Those things might have slipped my attention," he says miserably.

Boots sits back in his seat, stunned.   "I almost pushed her into the pool," he says flatly, in horror.

"I didn't see," Bruno reports sadly.   "I was kind of looking at your ass."

Boots puts his face in his hands.   "We're so stupid," he moans.

"At least your parents aren't _obviously leaning up against the door to eavesdrop _," Bruno says, voice rising with every successive word, glaring over Boots' shoulder poisonously.

There was a rapid, guilty shuffle and the sound of fading footsteps before Bruno finally said:

"Um, look.   This is such a mess.   We can stop.   Being boyfriends.   If you want."

Boots stares at him, watches the misery written into every line of Bruno's face, and how he wrings his hands nervously, the slump of his shoulders.   It's weird to realize that he's never seen anything--not burying zucchini, not nearly being expelled, not faced with the closing of Macdonald Hall--make Bruno this unhappy before, and it answers all of Boots' questions, smoothes away his uncertainties, and he reaches over to do the same.

Bruno's eyes snap up to meet his when Boots' fingers brush across his forehead, and when the worry-lines there don't disappear Boots smiles and says, "I like your messes, okay?"

Boots is worried for a minute that Bruno's going to choke on his own tongue, but then it's like dawn creeping over the east lawn at the Hall and fringing everything in gold when Bruno's eyes round and his mouth curves up and he leans and murmurs--just before he presses his mouth to Boots'--"Yes, I like your messes, too."

Kissing Bruno is probably like coming home or waking up or seeing the endless sky or a dozen other fantastic and ordinary things, but mostly, Boots thinks that he's _kissing Bruno _, and can't think of anything else at all.

*****

Bruno lives in a three-storey house in Bethesda, Maryland, across the street from Swiss diplomats with an atrium instead of a foyer.   His father argues that there's no reason a fifteen-foot Christmas tree can't fit into said foyer and his mother argues there's extravagant and then there's _stupid _.   Bruno's younger sister pops bubblegum and reads out loud from the E.L.F website and makes somewhat disturbing references to (a) learning bomb-making in the name of protecting Douglas Firs across America during this season of great distress and (b) learning bomb-making to explode Boots, if he ever makes Bruno wear his Sidwell Friends sweatpants in the basement again.

Bruno winces and says, "Sorry.   She's overcompensating for kicking me in the balls a lot as a kid."

"Somebody has to watch out for them," Sadie argues.

"Sadie!" Bruno's dad snaps, and smiles at Boots, all sweetness and persuasion.   "You think we should have the fifteen-foot Christmas tree, don't you, Boots?"

There's something about the way he says it that makes Boots feel on edge, so Boots soldiers on and says, "I think you should have whichever Christmas tree you and Mrs. Walton agree on."

Bruno's mom smirks and pokes her husband in the side, crowing, "See!   Boots is already so well-trained he knows exactly what to say--and that was that I'm right and you're wrong and there's no way in hell we're getting a two-storey tall Christmas tree."

"It's not like the house isn't three storeys," Bruno says absently, sliding one hand down Boots side until his fingertips are stroking over the small of Boots' back.  

"Oh my God," Sadie says, looking like she's about to vomit, before she turns to her parents and says, "Mom, Dad, make them _stop.   _Ever since they pulled their heads out of their asses it's just been one revolting blow to my perception of reality after another!"

It took all of four seconds spent with Bruno's genetic background to understand why Bruno is the way he is--but it took admittedly much longer to understand why Bruno is the way he is with Boots.

Boots figures if Sadie's already scarred, they've got nothing to lose, so he puts his head on Bruno's shoulder and says, ignoring the fistfight that looks like it might break out between Bruno's parents, "Hey, I'm glad you invited me."

"Yeah?" Bruno says, brushing his lips over Boots' temple.   "I'm glad you didn't run away screaming."

"We can save that for next year," Boots decides.

"I can't wait," Bruno answers, and the really scary thing is, neither can Boots.

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks must go to the brilliant, fabulous Calathea -- one of my sister's in arms for Kormanfic -- who helped me to kick this story into shape and also to avoid foolish shenanigans like _changing the holiday in question_ midway through the story and _getting Bruno's mom's name wrong_. I'm totally a rock star, you know? - Pru (2/4/2007)


End file.
